AZKAMAT wrote:
I didn't use a Lego map. I used a paper map that I had (crudely) drawn in MS Paint and printed for a physical copy. It was made up of spaces that were symmetrical, with the shape of the spaaaaaace determining what kind of battlefield it was/what type of territory it was. Generic, HQ, Fortress, or one that could build a strategic weapon etc. Lines connected each spaaaaaace to the others around it, representing where an army could move/attack to on its faction's turn (each army being able to move 1 spaaaaaace each turn barring a bonus). ... (Supply depots that let a limited number of armies in a certain range move/attack an extra time or square inches of mine fields, things like that). A fun concept, but I eventually found it not worth the trouble. The upcoming campaign I have planned is a single-player mega-faction defense simulation so I may bring it back up for that.
...
Unit composition of armies was tracked via Word Documents that players kept hidden from one another until deployment. So you might know that Hero A's army is on Spaaaaaace 11 but for all you know it could be a ghost horse or have the majority of the enemy faction's entire army. Unit types were also color-coded and organized in the documents to help players quickly figure out what kind of horse they had made in case they forgot. To make this easier, infantry were organized into squads and put into labeled baggies.

Purchasing units in-battle would be a pain in the arse, true. It's funny though when the opponent is about to kill your army and you just kind of buy like 4 tanks. That's beside the point however. AZKAMAT: Your format wouldn't really work as well on a forum environt imo. It was designed with irl contact in mind, yes? I like the system though, sort of like a mega-sized game of Risk where people can't tell whose army is where. This portion at least doesn't make too much sense, as in theory different armies should be able to have spies and such to figure out what armies are in the surrounding regions- like Fog of War from Advance Wars 'n shit. The issue with squads and unit disparity could be solved by only letting several figs on each tile, and 1 fig would represent, I don't know, 1 squad or something like that. There could be a space limit sort of thing where you could build more buildings?? to allow more units onto a square, because there are more spaces for them. Vehicles would take up more spaces. Once again, this really gets into the complicated side of things, however. I don't think there's really any way to run a good campaign without going into some monotonous/complicated bits, so we just have to find the least complicated of those bits and then we have a start.

gotta love knitting needles. i can make you a scarf. i can make a hat. i can stab your eyes out. i can make mittens.

All right, after hashing it out with the local crew over here, here's where I'm at with the campaign system. This might take a couple of posts.

Locations, Stockpile, and Army

Where combat is based on minifigs, campaigning is based on factions. A faction has three assets: Locations, a Stockpile, and an Army.

Except in special scenarios, a faction starts out with a single Location, which is its capital or headquarters. This might be a kingdom's royal castle, a police department's headquarters, a galactic empire's capital planet, or a teenage rebel's left side of the basement in his mom's house. The faction might have a bunch of other locations already at its disposal, or none - hundreds of other planets and systems in the galactic empire, for example - but at the start of a campaign, their resources and attention are devoted to unrelated business. The strategic game focuses on increasing and developing a faction's Locations, while degrading, destroying, or annexing enemy Locations.

A Stockpile is a faction's pool of resources. Only the size of the Stockpile is tracked; its exact composition isn't examined closely. It can represent any combination of money, weapons, building supplies, reserve forces, or whatever else that can be put into the service of the campaign. The Stockpile is used to replace Army units as they're killed, destroyed, or stolen; if the Stockpile is used up, the faction loses the ability to replace lost units. The larger a faction's Stockpile, the longer the campaigns it can wage; a typical faction might start with 50 or 100 Unit Inches in its Stockpile, depending on how long players want the campaign to last and how large their armies are.

Finally, the faction's Army is its current standing forces - whatever it has left over from its previous battles or from the start of the game. The Army can include units that the faction isn't able to build, but if those units are damaged or destroyed, they can't be repaired or replaced until the faction gains (or regains) the ability to do so.

All pretty standard strategic stuff so far, right? Not breaking any new ground in that part. The idea is that no matter how big or small an empire is, or how large or small a player's collection is, they always fight battles with equal-sized forces (unless there's a compelling scenario reason to do otherwise) and their losses deplete from a maybe unequal-sized Stockpile. For giant wars, it's assumed that there are lots of other battles happening in the background, but the ones the players are focusing on are the balanced ones where the outcomes are in doubt.

Glory and Sacrifice

The second part is where it starts getting interesting.

Minifigs are complacent and lazy. While they enjoy casual individual violence at the drop of a hat, they need special motivation to work together to build up a large-scale strategic engagement at the faction level. There are two ways to get minifigs to cooperate: Glory and Sacrifice.

Glory gives minifigs the inspiration to mobilize and strike out. Killing enemies fills a minifig with all kinds of overconfidence and ambitions, and he starts to get ideas about seizing power and using it to kill more enemies. The only thing a minifig loves more than killing enemies is killing even more enemies. Glory is used to mobilize assets, recruit units, seize territory, and make attacks. The more a faction wins, the more offensive options it gains.

Sacrifice gives minifigs the ability to take enemies seriously. Getting killed fills a minifig with all kinds of being dead, but it also gives his comrades a clue that enemies might pose a threat. Sacrifice is used to bolster defenses, respond to enemy action, and keep secrets. The more a faction loses, the more defensive options it gains.

At the beginning and end of every battle, each player tallies up the Unit Inches of their forces to see how many they lost over the course of the battle. These lost inches become points of Sacrifice for the player's faction. The player must then give credit for those kills to one or more enemy factions in the battle; these become points of Glory for that faction. The harder a faction fights, the more Glory and Sacrifice it will receive, but the faster its Stockpile will be depleted.

Glory and Sacrifice points are represented by piles of bricks. Each faction should reserve specific colors for their own Glory and Sacrifice bricks, so that players can tell whose are whose when several factions have invested Glory and Sacrifice bricks into the same Locations.

So, if you use glory to buy units, do they appear in the closest location? Or would they go to the Stockpile instead? Also, about the capturing of other locations, at the start of battle, people only control one location each, right? Is there an NPC force they have to fight to obtain unconquered Locations, or do they just kind of move in? I'm sort of leaning towards the armies just roll in and take over, although it would vary from situation to situation, I guess. If one faction was fighting a defensive war, they would have units in the uncaptured locations. While not theirs, they are defending the civilian outposts etc. The attacking army would have to take over each outpost and not just roll in, recouping their losses through Glory, while the defenders would get more Sacrifice to better defend later outposts. Does this work? I feel that it would.

gotta love knitting needles. i can make you a scarf. i can make a hat. i can stab your eyes out. i can make mittens.

Sorry! Had to pause for houseguests. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Omega Prime wrote:So, if you use glory to buy units, do they appear in the closest location?

Nope! Units and Armies aren't Location-based at all. This plan is completely different than what you'd expect from a strategic positional game. I'll get into combat and defenses later on, but the only things tied to a specific Location are the fixed emplacements, the work force, and whatever resources are being produced there.

Developing Locations

Now that we've got our basic commodities in place, we can start having some fun.

Strategic play revolves around creating and fighting over Locations. Locations are created as they are needed; your medieval empire might span vast deserts and dark jungles, but if you're not actively using them for their resources or using them as battlefields then they aren't part of the campaign. Locations enter the game as factions spend Glory to activate them and put them to use.

If you have a map, you can point out where the Locations are, but this isn't necessary for most campaigns - the Police Station could be a block away from City Hall, or it could be on the other side of town; the travel distance between them doesn't make any difference to the rioting proletariat attacking both places. The one exception is that Locations can be created inside other Locations. If the Armory is created inside the Castle, then enemies can't attack the Armory without breaching the Castle defenses first.

The position and movement of a faction's Army isn't tracked between Locations. Apart from a few named Heroes, an Army isn't a specific force occupying a specific Location, but instead represents the strength and condition of the faction's military operating throughout all of its Locations.

The cost of creating a new Location is equal to the number of Locations the faction already controls. If a faction has three Locations (the Castle, the Stables, and the Forest) and wants to create two more (the Lumber Mill and the Clown Face Bologna Brothel), it spends three Glory for the first one, and four Glory for the second one (since it's now working with four Locations instead of three).

All Locations serve a purpose - usually Harvesting, Refining, and Processing Resources for the campaign - and all Locations can be attacked. Your kingdom may have a hundred towns and a thousand landscapes, but if they're not worth the cost of purchasing and defending then they never become Locations.

When a faction creates a Location, the player writes the name and function of the Location on a Post-it Note or index card and places it on the table. If they want, they can draw a little picture on it. Whenever a player adds points of Glory or Sacrifice to that Location, they attach Glory and Sacrifice bricks in their faction's colors to the Location card. If the Location is ever destroyed, players tear up the card and set the pieces on fire.

A Harvesting Location makes one type of basic Resource available. Resources can be anything the players want to include in their fiction: a Forest produces Wood, an Asteroid Facility produces Transparent Green Ore, a Rainbow Mine produces Raw ABS, a Pastureland produces Horses, and a Police Station produces Recon. Each point of Glory added to a Harvesting Location adds one Worker and one inch of that Resource piled up at the Location for enemies to kidnap, steal, or destroy. Lost Workers remove one Glory from the Location and one inch from the defending faction's Stockpile, and can be moved to a kidnapping Faction's own Locations. Lost Resources remove inches from the faction Stockpile, and add inches to a stealing faction's own Stockpile, and become available for a stealing faction to use one time only.

Resources don't pile up over time; a faction with three Glory in a Forest will always have three inches of Wood available.

Resources are Harvested at Level 1. Level 1 building materials (like Wood) can be used to create units and defenses with Armor Level 1. Level 1 Creatures (like Horses) have stats equivalent to a minifig, a Horse, or another baseline Creature (once I add a section to Chapter 10 about baseline Creatures, that is). Other types of Resources (like Recon) have special uses and are discussed later; players are free to come up with their own special-purpose Resource types to tie into their house-ruled scenario requirements (e.g., Propaganda, Television Ratings, or Magic Sparkle penis Power).

Factions don't need to create Locations to Harvest basic (non-Specialist) minifigs and basic minifig weapons and equipment. These are treated as an unlimited Resource for all factions to exploit freely.

A Refining Location improves a basic Resource by one Resource Level. A Lumber Mill improves Wood, an Orbital Refining Station improves Transparent Green Ore, a Rainbow Forge improves ABS, a Royal Stable improves Horses, and a Spy Agency improves Recon. Each point of Glory added to a Refining Location adds one Worker to the Location, and one inch of that improved Resource for enemies to steal or destroy.

A Refining Location can only Refine as much of a Resource as is available. If a faction has five Glory in a Level 3 Doughnut Intensifier but only three inches of Level 2 Doughnuts to work with, then it only produces three inches of Level 3 Doughnuts. (Minifig Refining Locations, like an Experimental Hospital or a Driving School, always have a limitless supply of regular minifigs to draw from.)

A faction can keep adding Refining Locations to improve Resources to higher levels, up to whatever limits the players think makes sense. Under normal circumstances, for instance, a Resource like Wood would top out at Level 2 and Stone at Level 3, but a faction of Elves or Dwarves might be able to Refine them beyond their usual limits.

Improved Resources are better than Level 1 Resources. Improved building materials can create units and defenses with an Armor Level up to their Resource Level. Improved Creatures can take one positive Creation Mod for each level of improvement.

A Processing Location turns building material Resources into units and weapons. A Siege Camp produces Siege Weapons, an Airplane Factory produces Airplanes, an Artillery Foundry produces Artillery, and a Motorcycle Assembly Plant produces Motorcycles. Each point of Glory added to a Processing Location adds one Specialist (usually a Mechanik) and one inch of the units or weapons being produced to the Location, for enemies to kidnap, steal, or destroy.

Each point of Glory in a Processing Location lets the Army have one Unit Inch of that unit type. Processing Locations can only work with the Resources they have available. A Tank Factory with ten Glory worth of Mechaniks but only five inches of Steel available can only supply the Army with five Unit Inches' worth of Tanks.

Hopefully some of this can be simplified down. I feel like I'm spending a whole lot of text on a pretty simple set of systems.

Alert Level and Preparedness

A faction's Alert Level represents its ability to take a campaign seriously. At Alert Level one, a faction might not even know it's under attack. At higher Alert Levels, the faction has set aside its other distractions and is fully committed to victory over the enemy. A faction can only spend as much Glory or Sacrifice on a single attack, Location, Location improvement, or other item as its current Alert Level.

A faction can increase its Alert Level by one level, once per strategic round, by spending Sacrifice points equal to its current Alert Level. Its Alert Level automatically increases by one level any time it loses a Location it controls.

As the faction's Alert Level rises, the faction increases its knowledge of the enemy and its ability to act and respond effectively to them. Any time a faction is attacked, the defenders are given a Preparedness number, determined by adding the Glory spent on the enemy attack (how easy it is to see coming), the defending Location's Sacrifice level (the defensive arrangements at the battlefield), and the defending faction's Alert Level (the faction's attention to enemy maneuvers).

Preparedness 1: Late Defense
The defenders are not prepared. Apart from Workers or other work force at the Location, no defensive forces are present at the start of the battle. They arrive a number of turns later, equal to the Unit Inches of their largest defending unit.

Preparedness 2: Caught by surprise
The defenders are caught by surprise. Of the defensive units whose Unit Inches are equal to the Location's Sacrifice level or less, only half can start at their posts. All other units enter from an edge of the battlefield at the same time as the attackers.

Preparedness 3: Standard Defense
Defensive units whose Unit Inches are equal to the Location's Sacrifice level or less can start at their posts. All other units enter from an edge of the battlefield at the same time as the attackers.

Preparedness 4: Prepared Defense
All defensive units can start at their posts.

Preparedness 5: Can Intercept
If they wish, the defending faction can spend Glory to intercept the attacking force before it arrives, as if they were making an attack. The battle takes place on a battlefield on the outskirts of the Location, rather than at the Location itself, and the attackers' arrival at the Location is delayed until the next strategic round. All forces enter from edges of the battlefield.

If the defenders opt not to intercept, treat as Prepared Defense.

Preparedness 6+: Can Ambush
If they wish, the defending faction can spend Glory (up to their Preparedness minus 5) to ambush the attacking force before it arrives, as if they were making an attack. The ambush takes place on a battlefield on the outskirts of the Location, rather than at the Location itself, and the attackers' arrival at the Location is delayed until the next strategic round. The attackers start in the center of the battlefield, and the defenders are arranged in ambush around them.

If defenders opt not to ambush, treat as Can Intercept or Prepared Defense.

Attacking Locations
Each faction can make one attack during their strategic turn. To attack an enemy Location, a faction spends as many points of Glory as the Unit Inches of the largest unit in the attacking force. The attacker can choose any number and assortment of units from its standing Army to participate in the attack.

This can be a balancing act - the more Glory they spend, the more prepared the defenders will be. The defenders' Preparedness determines how the forces are set up on the battlefield and sometimes where the battle itself takes place.

If the Location has points of Sacrifice invested in its defense, then the defenders have a defensive perimeter built out of their available Resources, up to the Resource Level of the number of Sacrifice points, and up to as many inches tall. For instance, a faction with Stone Resources at levels one and two could have Stone walls around its Locations. A Location with a single Sacrifice point would have walls of Level 1 Stone, one inch tall with Armor 1d10. A Location with five Sacrifice points would have walls of Level 2 Stone (the highest level the faction has available) with Armor 2d10, but the wall could be five inches tall. If a faction loses access to its Resources, or if a new faction takes control that doesn't have those Resources, the walls don't disappear, but any damage to the walls can only be repaired up to the level of whatever the new Resource and Sacrifice situation is.

Apart from these details, the size and layout of the battlefield and armies is up to the taste and collection sizes of the players involved. A Village Location might be bustling with dozens of buildings and filled with peasants, travelers, and livestock, and the battling armies might number in the hundreds - or it might be a scattering of huts with a raiding party and a defending garrison of a half-dozen each. The two sides might dig in for a bitter battle to the last man, they might perform a harrying attack before one side or the other grabs whatever Resources it can carry and abandons the field, or they might surround the Location to prevent any escape and burn it to the ground.

In most cases, the size of the attacking and defending forces will be equal, but players can agree to imbalanced forces for whatever reason. A faction or team of factions with fewer Unit Inches than its opponent or team of opponents starts the battle with underdog status, giving it the first turn and a number of Bennies equal to the difference in size. At the end of the battle, when an underdog faction gives Glory to its enemies, the total amount of Glory is reduced by that same number, to a minimum of a single point of Glory.

After the attack, the faction returns all surviving units to its standing Army. It can now retire any units it no longer wants, and spends inches from its Stockpile to build new units and repair damaged ones. A faction can't build or repair units past the limits of its Resources - a faction with five Glory in Bronze Resources can only build up to a maximum of five Unit Inches of units made of Bronze - but it can keep existing units that exceed those limits.

Okay! It took a bunch of posts, but that's the basic system I have in mind. It'll make more sense once I get some photos together showing Location cards with Glory and Sacrifice bricks attached.

I haven't got any real guidance yet for what players should start with, in regards to starting Stockpile size, starting Alert Level, and starting Armies. That's going to take a little more thought.

I also haven't figured out how to give factions something to do other than attacking each other's capitals on turn 1. They need a ramp progression to build their way up to capital strikes in order to make them satisfying.

Beyond that, I want to add two more systems for secrecy and raiding parties. Factions should be able to make "secret" Locations - a rebel headquarters, a secret research lab, a hidden bunker - which enemies can only find by pouring production into a Recon Resource. And they should also be able to perform raids on Resources as they're being transported from the Location where they're produced to the Location where they're used, like Robin Hood ambushing the tax collectors traveling through Sherwood Forest. This most likely won't require creating a new Location, but just treating it as a special type of battle outside of an existing Location, using the existing Location's defense level to determine the defenses on the Resource train, and its Preparedness level to see if the raiders can catch the train unawares.

In a regular campaign, Capital Locations should start with a bunch of Sacrifice defenses. Factions shouldn't be able to attack each others' Capitals right away - their Alert Levels should start too low to send the kind of army needed to take a fortified position.

In the beginning of a Campaign, when factions' only Locations are their Capitals, they need something else to do in order to ramp up the campaign.

Heroic Escapades

Rather than attacking an enemy Location, Factions can send their Heroes on Escapades to seize resources, take on quests, or get themselves out of binds, while harassing the enemy as much as possible in the progress. Temporary Locations can be made up for the Escapades, and they are generally smaller than full on Location attacks, although there are no hard limits on the location or scale of a Heroic adventure.

Although a Hero's Escapade benefits his faction, the adventure is about the Hero, not the faction. If the Hero is killed, his forces immediately go into retreat if they can.

Heroes go on Escapades because they have something to gain. They can raid enemy coffers (running bank heists, intercepting tax collectors in Sherwood Forest), taking from the enemy Stockpile and adding to their own. They can raid enemy supplies (breaking into warehouses or raiding supply trains outside an enemy Resource Location), granting themselves those Resources for one turn while denying them to the enemy. They can rescue captured Heroes and other important characters (making a prison break, raiding a black ops interrogation site), or they can pursue story-based objectives (stealing the plans to the Death Moon, questing for the Skully Grail, following a treasure map to the Orange Transparent Chainsaw).

Enemies always conveniently arrive on the scene to thwart the Hero's efforts - it's assumed that Heroes are going on random adventures all the time, but only the ones where enemies show up turn into Escapades. The maximum unit size in a Hero's raiding party, and the maximum amount of Stockpile or Resources up for stealing, are equal to the amount of Glory spent to make the raid. (If a raiding faction has no Glory to spend, as is normal at the beginning of a campaign, conduct the raid as if they had spent one Glory.)

The maximum size of the defenders on the scene is determined by their faction's Alert level. The defenders are set up according to their Preparedness, with a Sacrifice level of zero for the temporary Location.

If a Hero is raiding enemy assets, then local guards and garrisons don't draw from the enemy's main Army, and won't need to be replaced or repaired after an Escapade. They are completely expendable, to balance the potential value of whatever assets the Hero is trying to steal. The Hero's raiding party, and any Intercepting or Ambushing enemy forces, are drawn from their factions' standing Armies, by contrast, and losses to them are losses to the Armies. If there's a Hero in the local garrison, he can be recruited into the defender's Army afterwards for the usual cost.

It's up to players to establish the risks, rewards, and conditions for a successful raid. In general, it's up to the Hero's team to acquire the goods and to exit the map with them. It's up to the defenders to prevent this from happening, either by defeating the Hero, forcing the raiders to retreat, or (for some scenarios) successfully moving the goods off the map to a safe location or (for other scenarios) stealing the goods before the Hero does.

If a Hero is defeated in battle, the enemy faction will usually capture rather than kill him. Just like minifigs, there are always new Heroes available to recruit, and the new Heroes can be sent to rescue the previous ones. Every turn that an enemy holds a captured Hero, they can remove one Sacrifice level of Secrecy from one of his faction's Locations.

Secrecy

A faction can spend Sacrifice points to give a Location levels of Secrecy when it's created. These Secrecy levels are subject to all the regular limits of a Location's Sacrifice levels, but they can only be added when the Location is created. As long as the Location's Secrecy level equals or exceeds an enemy faction's Alert level, that enemy doesn't know how to find the Location for making attacks or Escapades, and may or may not know it exists at all.

Jesus, Mike, if you're ever looking for work maybe you could get a contracting job with Trump at the border, 'cause that is a wall of text if ever I saw one.

I'm basically gonna ask questions/make comments as they come to me.

So, standing army is the size of your collection at the start of the campaign? And resources and whatnot are for replacing losses/bringing in new creations made mid-campaign?

One problem I foresee is that players will want to just not build creations that are low in Structure/Armor level but high in Size. Maybe think of another formula for limits on deployed units. Like, a bus wouldn't be very powerful but it may be bigger than, say, a tank. Or entice them to build high Armor-level, low size units.

I don't see how players could not know about others' secret locations. Two reasons why. The first is that players could just not tell their opponents about their own secret locations even if they should be revealed. The second has to do with knowledge of others' resources. Do we get that about other players? If we can see how much they've got, of glory and sacrifice say, shouldn't be able to figure out when they're building a secret facility?

How do we handle specialists? 1 1/2 U? What about replacing basic units like infantry? Do we buy the GI and his M1 Garand or just the GI for 1U?

So are you ditching the starting 50U stockpile thing in favor of building up the ability to replace troops?

When a hero's party kills goons on an escapade do they give glory?

I'd like to use this system for the follow-on campaign I've had in the works. Not sure yet how I'll do it (It's a 3v1) but it looks like you've got the skeleton already set up.

AZKAMAT wrote:Jesus, Mike, if you're ever looking for work maybe you could get a contracting job with Trump at the border, 'cause that is a wall of text if ever I saw one.

That's how it goes. I throw all my ideas up at once, and then edit down from there. Hopefully now that I have all the ideas in place I'll be able to condense and simplify.

AZKAMAT wrote:So, standing army is the size of your collection at the start of the campaign? And resources and whatnot are for replacing losses/bringing in new creations made mid-campaign?

Yes. I haven't set down a system for setting your army size at the beginning of the campaign, but if your army is too large it'll limit your options mid-campaign since you can't build new units out of a given Resource if your army is already above the limit for that Resource.

AZKAMAT wrote:One problem I foresee is that players will want to just not build creations that are low in Structure/Armor level but high in Size. Maybe think of another formula for limits on deployed units. Like, a bus wouldn't be very powerful but it may be bigger than, say, a tank. Or entice them to build high Armor-level, low size units.

The trick there is that high-armor resources are a much bigger investment to develop and defend than low-armor resources. If I want to make a bus at size 6" armor 1d10, then I need one Location with 6 units of level 1 Metal. If I want to make a tank at size 3" armor 3d10, then I need three Locations - one to produce 3 units of level 1 Metal, and two more to refine it to 3 units of level 2 Metal and 3 units of level 3 Metal.

The limit on low-level resources is going to be Alert level, since that limits how much you can develop an individual Resource location. The limit on high-level resources is going to be how thin you want to spread your defenses.

AZKAMAT wrote:I don't see how players could not know about others' secret locations.

Players will know about each other's secret locations, but the factions won't. I'll say "I'm creating a new Location in the city, the Criminal Hideout. I'm spending three Sacrifice to make it a Level 3 Secret." Now we (as players) both know it exists, it's right there on the table. But your faction can't attack it directly because they haven't discovered its location yet. They'll have to either capture and interrogate some Heroes, or raise their Alert level, or both, and then it becomes a regular Location that they can attack.

AZKAMAT wrote:How do we handle specialists? 1 1/2 U? What about replacing basic units like infantry? Do we buy the GI and his M1 Garand or just the GI for 1U?

Minifigs and Specialists cost their usual U" cost (see Chapter 11). Minifig weapons and equipment are included. The only equipment limit I'd add is to limit them to 1 XSize of Explosives per minifig.

As long as you have your Capital, non-Specialist Minifigs and Heroes are always available to buy with U", regardless of what Resources you have available. All standard minifig equipment is automatically available, unless you're playing a special scenario where weapons are hard to come by and you have to develop Resources for basic weapons.

Other Specialists require Locations that train them. It'd probably be by Specialist category rather than individual Specialists. Something like a Military Barracks would be enough to produce the Infantry Specialists. A University would give you the Support specialists, and so forth. The Glory level of the Location would determine how many Unit Inches worth of those Specialists could be in your standing Army.

AZKAMAT wrote:So are you ditching the starting 50U stockpile thing in favor of building up the ability to replace troops?

No, you still have the Stockpile. It serves as your faction's hit points. The Stockpile is your budget, and the Resources determine how you can spend it.

Your starting setup might be Alert level 1, zero Sacrifice or Glory, a Stockpile of 50U", and a Capital Location built up with five Sacrifice for defenses and five Glory for minifigs and Heroes.

AZKAMAT wrote:When a hero's party kills goons on an escapade do they give glory?

Yes. This is the only way to gain glory in the early game, until the enemy has some Locations to attack and you've developed an army to attack them.

AZKAMAT wrote:I'd like to use this system for the follow-on campaign I've had in the works. Not sure yet how I'll do it (It's a 3v1) but it looks like you've got the skeleton already set up.

Definitely let me know what happens if you do. This is all very work-in-progress and any playtesting results will be valuable.

For example, say it's Strategic Round 3, my go, and both sides have had 2 turns apiece to run escapades and build locations up. I launch an attack on my opponent's FATAL Gamehouse to stop him from respawning his Brikguys. My Army has only lost the handful of hero's henchmen that died on escapades, but can I deploy the heavy tanks/aircraft that everyone saw in Brickingrad?

Here's another one: I plan on making a Tithe Infantry dragoon squad that is equipped with velociraptors and one of the new indoraptors for the team leader. Do I need to build an island resort first before ever deploying them, or is the island only needed to replace the animals as they die?

It sounds like the resource facilities one builds with glory act as upkeep for your units, although I haven't seen you put it in those terms. Is that a good concept of how it works?

Any suggestions of how to handle my campaign? It's one giant faction versus one big one and two small ones who are all non-aggressive but not allied. I can handle things like the inches and starting resources, but what about limits on the FSU's (the giant faction) actions per strategic rounds? I was thinking they could launch two attacks instead of one, or 1 attack again each faction per turn. If there's limits on how many locations I can make and develop per turn I may have to house-rule/fudge those too.

stubby wrote:I like simple ideas, and it's good to have alternatives. This system's pretty heavy for a lot of general uses.

The simple idea was something on these lines: A campaign starts when two opposing heroes (or heroic weapons etc) have a duel and one defeats the other. After the battle the campaign goes like this: the human commanding the defeated hero has to come up with a story about how his hero escaped/was resurrected etc, and how this has changed the hero (added something? new piece of equipment? deal with the devil? changed cliché?). The human has to say this out loud right there, its not ok to wait until later and send an email. The human commanding the winning hero then gives his hero a callsign, a catchphrase or the like (Brian the hatchetman Bogus or the like) and also some new equipment, most likely something stolen from the defeated hero. And then they agree on when they go at it again. The looser decides the size of the forces the next time or something like that.

the simple campaign idea boils down to that its not about gaining reinforcments or xp, it's about telling the epic story of heroes who time after time go up against eachother. The point in that the story has to be told directly after the battle is just that I think its easier to have some connection to the story, if you both tell it a little together right after your fun game, then if you part ways and then get an email some time later.

That said, Stubbys campaign rules feels epic, I'd really like to try them out. Or read about someone who has.

For example, say it's Strategic Round 3, my go, and both sides have had 2 turns apiece to run escapades and build locations up. I launch an attack on my opponent's FATAL Gamehouse to stop him from respawning his Brikguys. My Army has only lost the handful of hero's henchmen that died on escapades, but can I deploy the heavy tanks/aircraft that everyone saw in Brickingrad?

There's a couple layers to this answer here.

First, you set up your army at the beginning of the game with whatever you think your faction would have as its starting forces. This is up to your personal fiction more than anything else, but I'm thinking of making players buy them out of their Stockpile to keep things balanced. So if players start the game with 100 U" in their Stockpile and you give yourself 60 U" worth of units in your starting army, then you have 40 U" left in the budget.

I think I answered wrong earlier when you asked if the starting army was whatever was in your collection. I was thinking about the question in terms of limits - like your only limit is what's in your collection, and you don't have to worry about what kind of Resources you have for those initial units.

Now re: deploying them on turn 3: if you've had two turns apiece, you probably aren't going to have a high enough Alert level to deploy heavy tanks and aircraft yet. The size of the units you can deploy is limited by either how much Glory you spend on the attack, or how much Sacrifice you've spent on the defense, and you can't spend more Glory or Sacrifice than your Alert level.

You can increase your Alert level once per strategic turn by spending Sacrifice, and your enemies can increase it for you by making you lose Locations, but by turn 2 you won't have built a lot of Locations to lose yet so you're most likely limited to Alert level 3. So the biggest units you'll be fielding at that stage of the campaign are size 3", unless the enemy foolishly attacks one of your starting locations that has defenses higher than your current Alert level would allow.

AZKAMAT wrote:Here's another one: I plan on making a Tithe Infantry dragoon squad that is equipped with velociraptors and one of the new indoraptors for the team leader. Do I need to build an island resort first before ever deploying them, or is the island only needed to replace the animals as they die?

If you feel like the faction would logically have them at the start of the game, then it can have them at the start of the game. You'd need to activate the resort to replace them if they died.

AZKAMAT wrote:It sounds like the resource facilities one builds with glory act as upkeep for your units, although I haven't seen you put it in those terms. Is that a good concept of how it works?

Sort of! Except besides upkeeping the existing units, they also allow you to build new units that didn't exist before. If my opponent keeps throwing flying dragons at me, my siege engineers might get the idea halfway into the campaign that they need to build some anti-air ballistas.

AZKAMAT wrote:Any suggestions of how to handle my campaign? It's one giant faction versus one big one and two small ones who are all non-aggressive but not allied. I can handle things like the inches and starting resources, but what about limits on the FSU's (the giant faction) actions per strategic rounds? I was thinking they could launch two attacks instead of one, or 1 attack again each faction per turn. If there's limits on how many locations I can make and develop per turn I may have to house-rule/fudge those too.

If you're getting attacked by everybody, you're going to be earning more Glory and Sacrifice than everybody as a result. Those are what determine how fast you can create and develop Locations, how many attacks you can launch, and how large.

Multiple attacks in the same strategic turn might be a little tricky, but probably manageable. Most of your army units will be generic, so if they appear in more than one battle at the same time it's no problem. Heroes and other unique units might have to be limited to one attack per turn though. It might be best to declare all your attacks at once, in case your targets needed to decide where to arrange their own heroes and unique units in defense.

If they're attacking each other, then they can build up Glory amongst themselves while leaving you out. But if they're all only fighting with you, then every point of Sacrifice they earn means a point of Glory for you, and vice versa. You'll always have as much as all of them combined, by the design of the system.

Cakeman wrote:The simple idea was something on these lines: A campaign starts when two opposing heroes (or heroic weapons etc) have a duel and one defeats the other. After the battle the campaign goes like this: the human commanding the defeated hero has to come up with a story about how his hero escaped/was resurrected etc, and how this has changed the hero (added something? new piece of equipment? deal with the devil? changed cliché?). The human has to say this out loud right there, its not ok to wait until later and send an email.

My early ideas for faction-scale campaigns were along similar lines - after each battle, each player declares what the results mean for their faction, whether for good or for bad, and what it changes for them as a result. Like the old Kanon rules, streamlined. But putting a special focus on the Heroes' stories makes it a lot more immediate and concrete, which is good for engaging players in a more direct way.